Social Media is a buzz word that everyone wants the opportunity of being a part. But many people are very skeptical on the impression it may have on a serious customer about the positioning and image of a business. Social Media Websites are often seen as informal and unofficial hangouts for people and businesses alike. In the recent past more businesses are seeing social media as a tool to reach out to their target market where they are most likely to be noticed. This article highlights some ways in which businesses use social media in an official capacity, yet maintaining a friendly and informal approach.

Customer Support

We know many businesses who use Twitter and Facebook to provide customers with constant updates about their service. A world famous DNS and Proxy service uses Twitter to Report Service Outages across their global data centers. The company posts frequent tweets about maintenance and migration activities and also posts brief updates on server faults and restoration. Some Hardware and Laptop manufacturers now offer technical support on Social Media websites. They handle customer grievances and also provide contact details of their nearest service centers through tweets or posts. Many banks and financial institutions constantly provide safety tips and security reminders to their customers. While these reminders can be annoying for some, the constant nagging may really help people to take security of their account seriously. Although this type of support maybe limited only to forwarding the complaint to the concerned technical team, it offers the customer a quick and easy way to get support by short circuiting a lengthy support process. This can be pleasing for the customer, but can be quite a task for the company to manage.

New Product Launches

A famous Automobile Manufacturer has started posting inside updates and a sneak preview of their latest designer cars. In past years they used to “leak” this information only to a few car magazines which demanded a high price which only a few could afford. Running a teaser campaign for a new product can be done best on social networks, especially due to their brevity and instant nature. You can slowly release bit by bit of the campaign and let it unfold instantly. The beauty of it is that you will be able to get instant feedback about the response and how well it has been received so that you can plan your next campaign or next revelation accordingly. This can also be detrimental to your image if you run a lousy campaign or do a shabby job. You will immediately know whether your campaign was a success or a failure. This is something only possible with social media. In the past many companies have successfully created a pre-launch hype on social media to attract the attention of potential customers.

Informal Banter

Many companies indulge in small talk and entertain inquisitive visitors to their pages or feeds to keep their page active and buzzing. While a bit of such informal talk is fine, when businesses go on a tangent on Social Media, it can get quite intolerable for the people following or subscribing to their updates. Sharing a joke or running a riddle campaign can be quite interesting and may generate a lot of publicity for your business if done well.

Educative Material

Pushing out educative material or academically interesting content can give your business a well needed boost. It not only creates more content for search engines to index, but it also shows your customers and prospective clients how much of relevant knowledge you have about your business. Almost all large corporations either have a YouTube Channel, or Blog or Facebook Page or Twitter Feed constantly buzzing with useful information which is aimed at catching the eye of a potential customer.